Interesting Documentary About a Clinical Psychiatrist with Numerous Disabilities Growing Up

Bill Wong — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:09:00 GMT

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I don't care if you don't understand Chinese. But, this is something actually an inspiring documentary. This is a documentary about a clinical psychiatrist who grew up with a host of diagnoses, with some that he didn't realize he has as he was growing up. Here are a host of his diagnoses- dyslexia, Tourlette's Syndrome, social anxiety, stuttered speech, to name a few. Also, even though he is left hand dominant, he does quite a bit of things with his right hand, which confuses the heck out of him in certain aspects of life. The notable thing is that his dyslexia wasn't diagnosed when he was in school. So, he spent quite a bit in his elementary and high school days figuring out why he struggled in the languages (Chinese and English), as he was actually pretty good in Math and sciences. Overall, because of the deficiencies in Chinese and English, his grades were only average. Nonetheless, he made it to college and studied medicine! Of course, since he has dyslexia (adding to the fact that he's not a native speaker in English), he endured more struggles on the academia portion of the classes than his fellow classmates. (I am sure there are some people on here would probably know what I mean in terms of what this guy went through.) Fortunately, he was able to get through by an "accommodation" that was made for him on the spot, which was allowing him to read his exam paper before the instructors graded them. Moreover, because of his enriched life experiences, he was able to do well in his clinical courses, perhaps better than a good bit of his classmates.

Fast forward to the present, he is the owner of a private clinic and treats clients, is a part owner of an ice-cream store up in China, has his own radio show, and writes articles (both medical and non-medical articles, I believe). Meanwhile, he also loves to cook and bowl as his occupations (you also could argue writing is one, too). So, as up-tempo as his lifestyle is, he actually achieved a pretty good balance in terms of his lifestyle goes. Also, because of technology, he actually now has less difficulty engaging in writing because his difficulties in writing Chinese is that he often would write in homonyms. What this means is that the sentence might sound right pronunciation wise, but it is definitely not so writing wise.

Anyway, the documentary is an inspiration to me (and hopefully some other students who are dealing with their disabilities to be OTR/L's or COTA's). I say that because this guy overcame a lot to be who he is. Sure, he still has problems (if you notice the portion of the documentary when he did his radio show). But, he is able to get around it and has a great social life. Of course, now I realized why my classmates, faculty, as well as some OT and OTA students from other schools telling me that I shouldn't be giving up my practice dreams despite realizing that I have Asperger's. If a guy like this can find a way, there's no reason I can't. Of course, accommodations got to be in place for me so that I can have the best chance to succeed.

Human Calculator OT : Hong Kong, occupation, English

Interesting Documentary About a Clinical Psychiatrist with Numerous Disabilities Growing Up